Hier die "intuitive" Erklärung von EMA (= exponential moving average, = exponentiell gleitender Durchschnitt), wenn dir die genaue mathematische Herleitung zu kompliziert ist:

Stell dir einen "normalen" Durchschnitt vor. Der nimmt eine Reihe von Zahlen, addiert sie alle, und teilt sie durch die Anzahl der addierten Zahlen. Bildet also den Mittelwert aus diesen Zahlen, die alle "gleichberechtigt", also gleich wichtig, behandelt werden.

Der EMA macht genau das selbe, aber gibt mehr "Gewicht" für die neueren Zahlen der Serie. Praktisch also: der EMA aus täglichen Preisen von vor einem Monat bis zum Preis heute sagt: "der Preis von vor 'nem Monat ist nicht mehr so wichtig. Der von letzter Woche so mittelwichtig. Und der Preis von gestern und heute ist am meisten gewichtet".

"Exponentiell" ist dann daran, dass diese Gewichtung schnell "abfällt", d.h., der Preis in der Mitte der Serie (also z.B. der Preis vor 2 Wochen, bei einer Serie von täglichen Preisen von vor einem Monat bis jetzt) ist *weniger* als halb so wichtig wie der Preis von gestern.

That's the correct answer. The problem isn't really the possibility of 200k coins being dropped on the market.

Under different circumstances, that amount would be soaked up without moving price an inch (after a brief flash crash & immediate recovery, of course)

Even now, that's just a small drop compared to the constant flow of new coins through mining -- don't believe for one second the big individual miners or mining cartels of today are pure holders. From what we know from public sources, they employ a mixed strategy, of immediate liquidation of a large part, and some percentage being held.

The point is that the current price isn't supported by buying (yet), at least not on the publicly visible exchanges (what happens OTC is a different matter). All other considerations (OP's mtgox coins liquidation scenario, for example) are secondary effects compared to that one.

Can we get an update please on what's going on, arepo?

I took a picture of what the early reversal phase of 2013 (July) looked like in terms of fibo levels. Note how, similar to now, at first price was zig-zagging around the 23% retracement level (red rectangle) of the initial uptrend (from ~63 to ~100). That was shortly afterwards followed by a big dump that took price down below the 50% level. However, on the 6h chart we closed exactly once below that level, and then began a beautiful, uninterrupted rise to the end (i.e. we made a new post capitulation high). See: green rectangle.

I think it's interesting to observe that volume wasn't particularly impressive during the early stages of that recovery... I can't really call it a divergence, but it also doesn't look confidence inspiring. The price action on the other hand was impressive: over the course of about 11 days we made it through 50%, 38%, 23%, 0% levels with no additional serious retracement down.


What about now? I suspect the following two factors will greatly influence whether we will see the reversal fizzle out again like in March, or whether we're really turning around this time: (a) how much force the downtrend on the 6h scale still has, and (b) how much force the following uptrend on the 6h scale will have.

If we end the 6h downtrend early, say within the next 24 to 48h, then I see a good chance that the following uptrend on the 6h scale will take us above 548 (to a new post capitulation high), which means the situation would look pretty different from March.

If, on the other hand, the 6h downtrend drags out, for another 4 days or so, keeping us near or below 23%, then we could hope for the following uptrend to be unexpectedly strong, taking us to a new high (though I'd consider that less likely), or we could see another anemic uptrend on the 6h scale, like the one from March 12 to 14, after which I'd give it a high chance that we'll see a more dramatic decline shortly afterwards.

I'm trying to see it your way, but I simply can't. Your 8 weeks picture still supports your point, because it clusters the March rally and the April rally together, along with their volume. Your 4 week and 2 week picture on the other hand start resembling the view I presented above: if you treat March and April separate, then it shows that volume was higher during the March breakout attempt than during the one we've seen so far.

Which view is the correct one (cluster, or not), I can't say with certainty.

I think that's more an artifact of the specific parameters you selected for your volume average than an actual signal. I just tried to recreate it myself, and any other value than 12 (i.e. 12 week volume average) gives a much less clear "upwards slope" at the end.

Here's a slightly more fine-grained picture, but still rather smoothed out (3 period average over 3 day volume). One could argue we're not doing so great with volume this time when compared to 2013, where the "reversal volume" showed clear signs of going up again. But of course it can still pick up this time, once we're more clearly settled at above 500.

I'm not sure I would call it "fake." 340 felt like a fantastic deal to many out there. So did everything between 340 and 420. From there, it's only a small step to buy in successively higher tranches. That's just the momentum.

But we are again in the same situation as before: once the initial enthusiasm about having scooped up those "cheap coins" is over, is there any sustained buying support at the level where we happen to land. And I can honestly say, I'm not sure about that. And so is the market right now, it seems.

Welcome to another installment of our series "conversations with myself".

Looks like we're at a critical juncture during our little rally. We're fighting for the first retracement level (23%) again, just like in March. This time, it's at ~499.

Right now, we're resting slightly below it, but it's too early to declare it lost in my opinion. The following days will tell if the market feels comfortable trading above 500 or not.

re: volume. Others pointed this out already, but the volume during the recent rise from 340 to 548 didn't look so good (slightly falling volume as we went up), but at least we're currently, in the first few bars after the 548 top, seeing a bit more volume overall than during the anemic March period.

With your gox statement, you described essentially what a final decoupling of Western exchanges from China would look like: if every last coin China scooped up is sold on the Western exchanges. That's a finite process, so for those not interested in swings that measure months up to a year maybe, it's irrelevant anyway.

And for the "daytraders" that you mentioned in your post, it's simply too crude (and too unimportant) exactly how many coins China plans on sending "back". The rate at which they do so can be seen in the charts anyway, so there's no need to speculate about the final state when you can trade the process in between.

I simply don't see the problem: it neither touches the core of Bitcoin's functionality, nor does it present an insurmountable problem for traders.

I am still somewhat open for the argument that Bitcoin's core could be considered compromised if /all/ the world's major governments would ban it, but so far, even the ones that are banning it (China) are kind of half-hearted about it (China) :P

Well, the details matter here, and jorge's polemics didn't include those: just like, on an average (or not so average) day Bitstamp and Huobi influence each other, so do they on the larger scale.

If your model has a rigid structure where Bitstamp price is purely a function of Huobi price, then you will fail to see the (inevitable, in the long run) decoupling of the other markets from China when (and if) China drops out of the game entirely.

Didn't say that'd be painless, by the way.

Hehe, ja kann sein, hab nur ein paar der Kommentare auf der letzten Seite gelesen, also vielleicht den Kontext verpasst.

Wenn jemand ernsthaft glaubt, alleine mit 'nem MACD handeln zu können, wird er schnell genug bemerken  dass ihn der Markt bestraft.

That said, in den letzten Monaten hätte eine "pure" 1 Tages MACD Strategie vielleicht funktioniert, aber auch nur so mehr schlecht als recht... besonders gegen Ende des Zeitraums wird's schon knapp... Kauf bei 560, Verkauf bei 580. Zieh noch slippage und Tagesschwankungen ab, und die Strategie hätte nicht mehr Gewinn gemacht.

Aber okay. Ende Thema MACD. Ist sowieso einer der langweiligsten Indikatoren die's gibt

Don't make a complex situation simpler than it is.

Where do you get the idea from that the price is set by China? From your own "Chinese slumber" method? Last time I checked, it was wildly off, during several large swings.

Or is it your impression that China/Huobi "leads" all large movements, which is somehow self-evident? Then the answer is: no, they don't. They lead, and they follow, just as you would expect between exchanges that are linked together by arbitrage.

Here's an example, taken from the April 10 crash. China "led" the first part of the decline, volume picking up at around 2:45 UTC, and price from 2700 to 2400. Bitstamp follows, 4k volume, but 400 holds so far.

Next, Huobi slightly recovers, back to 2500. Volume declining along. And suddenly comes Bitstamp with another 4k dump, and China tags along (on barely any volume), but completely on the heels of stamp wrt price.

2nd observation: the Huobi bottom came in almost 2 hours *after* stamp. That makes zero sense if stamp blindly "follows" China.

The reality of the Bitcoin market is more complex than you describe it, and it's a pretty poor indication of your analytical faculties that you feel the need to oversimplify it to the point where it becomes grotesque.

This reminds me of the often stated "fact" that stamp blindly follows gox. Of course prices on the two exchanges were correlated to an extremely high degree, and often enough, stamp followed gox, but towards the end, the two simply decoupled, without much ado. If your theory can't account for that (and in the polemic way your phrased it, it cannot), then it is worthless, in my opinion.

graphs: 15min views of stamp and huobi on April 10

Okay, okay... hab mir jetzt lange genug dieses Trauerspiel angesehen und auf die Zunge gebissen...

Giletto, wir hatten schon vorher hier 'ne Diskussion die etwas aus dem Ufer lief, darum versuch ich's dieses mal höflicher zu formulieren:

Du konstruiert hier das, was im Englischen 'straw man' heisst... "Strohmann Argument"? "Scheinargument" vielleicht?

Kein einziger vernünftiger TA trader den ich kenne würde behaupten dass es sinnvoll sei
(a) alleine basierend auf einem MACD Signal zu handeln, ohne dazu noch andere Signale einzuholen, und
(b) noch dazu alleine zu handeln auf so einem extrem empfindlichen Indikator, wie dem 15min MACD.

Dein Argument ist einfach keins. Es wäre so als würde ich sagen:
"Raumfahrt kann nicht funktionieren, weil diese lächerliche Idee der ESA ist, Raketen mit einer riesengrossen Gummischleuder ins All zu schiessen. Das kann offensichtlich nicht funktionieren."
Mit der Aussage zur Gummischleuder selbst hättest du zwar recht, aber eben nicht mit der Vorraussetzung dass die ESA tatsächlich auf die Weise probiert Raketen ins All zu befördern.

(okay, etwas dämliches Beispiel, geb ich zu :D)

Und hier mal, als Beispiel, wofür der 15min MACD gut zu gebrauchen war in den letzten Tage: um festzustellen, wann wir den "Boden" der letzten Kapitulation erreicht haben.

Der Kontext: Bei der Annäherung an 400 war vielen klar, dass wir dieses mal wohl durchschiessen werden. Ich war jedenfalls nicht der einzige der lange vorher verkauft hat. Und mein Signal dass wir am (vorläufigen) Boden sind war der 15min EMA crossover, bei ca. 360.

Zu beachten übrigens: hätte jemand, verfrüht, bei dem vorigen crossover eingekauft (als wir wieder kurz auf 400 zurückgingen), hätte er immer noch, gewinnneutral, wieder mit dem abwärts-crossover verkaufen können, um dann den echten Boden mitzunehmen.

Bevor du antwortest, bitte eine Sekunde nachdenken: ich behaupte nicht, dass man in jeder Situation mit 15min MACD erfolgreich handeln kann. Aber ich gebe dir ein Beispiel in dem man eben sehr wohl das Signal eines "hochnervösen" Indikators wie diesen verwenden kann.

Was ich übrigens auch nicht behaupte: dass 15min MACD die einzige Möglichkeit war, nahe am Boden zu kaufen. Deine Intuition ist vielleicht auch gut genug dafür. Aber das ist offensichtlich 'ne ganz andere Frage, ob man TA braucht zum handeln. Natürlich nicht, wenn man ein extrem gutes Gespür hat.


Graph: 15min MACD beim "Boden" vom 10. April

I'm sure they are, I suspect the Bitstamp account brings in quite a nice bit of revenue and fees.

But that's not the point, right? We were assigning probabilities to events, pulled out of our asses, but motivated by our experience and expectations. And my experience and expectation is that the banking interface is a fragile one, that could break. Not likely, so I personally don't see more than a, say, 5% chance that it happens, but "sub 1%" is another way of saying it's nigh impossible, and that I disagree with.

"sub 1%" chance for Bitstamp going belly up because Unicredit suddenly pulls the plug, and prices plunging as a result (even if just for a flash crash from which we immediately recover)?

That's an awfully optimistic stance (and I say that as an active trader on stamp).

EDIT: in case this isn't clear from the above, and lest I be accused of "bear FUD"... there's nothing wrong with Unicredit and Bitstamp right now, to my knowledge. Don't panic. I just consider the entire banking/exchange situation to be somewhat fragile, so in my mind, there's a > 1% chance that things can go sour without much warning.

I've been participating in this thread (on-topic) since February 26th.

My apologies to jl2012 for my part in the recent thread derailment.

That said, I stand behind my above on-topic statements: jl2012's model (and its presentation) is, by a large margin, the most mature regression model posted in this subforum since I've been around (April last year).

Don't worry too much about how my investments turned out. I can buy about as many used Ferraris as you have hair on your head :)

Seriously though, in case you didn't get the point I made: there are several people on btctalk compared to whom you are small fish. They still have the good sense no to walk around pretending to be knowledgeable TAers. Ergo: if they don't, you definitely shouldn't.

Not that I want to take a piss into your beloved bowl of cryptocereals, but considering that I was sceptical during last month's breakout-slash-reversal attempt (even though I ultimately thought it had a real chance for a while), I don't see how this one gets even close to the previous one.



In case you wonder what I mean: orange rectangle is the time frame of reaching and leaving the bottom, red one the aftermath. Currently, it looks like we fail to get anywhere near the March breakout in terms of momentum, and CMF isn't picking up either, hovering in the barely positive region.

The best thing I can say is that some of my favorite short-to-mid term indicators are about to turn bullish unless there's a sharp downturn (daily MACD, Fisher), so for the coming week(s) that spells some upwards potential, but the short term view makes me think this reversal is dead before it even got started.

Opinions?


UPDATE just 3 days later, and the situation looks a lot more pleasing. 6h CMF pulled up with a bit of a delay, to somewhere between 0.4 and 0.5, the highest spike since December, and well above the CMF peak of the March false breakout. A/D also shows a bullish divergence (not pictured below).

The real test for a sustained reversal will be whether we can hold this level, and do so with a bit of volume, but in any case, it looks like this rally might have legs after all.

Agreed on that point. I disagree with a lot of your analysis, or more precisely: with the certainty with which you tend to present it to the newcomers, but you do make testable predictions. That's a big plus.

The castle... yeah. Good on you for that. But that's entirely unrelated to the question at hand. There are people on this forum that could buy 20 of those (by being early miners or investors), but they don't make market predictions. Keep those two items separate, please.

There's a chance that regressing over the data points would be better than averaging, now that I think of it.

This is not my field, so I can't say stuff about this with authority, but if the goal is to dismiss, or value less, certain spikes then minimizing R^2 might be a better idea than taking a (moving) average.

But I'd hope someone with better knowledge of statistical modeling could chip in here.